mk->> It does seem to us that RTS aren't interested in just staging a protest, they're interested in creating a new reality within the protest.

Dee->> Yes, absolutely. Oh, yes, yes, definitely. It is a politically creative thing, rather than simply a negative protest. You've hit the nail on the head there. RTS have a history of being smart enough to use the media in a way that it's never been used before, which is why I'm very against the view that a few people have, which is that we should totally be self-referential and never have anything to do with the media and people outside ourselves. I think that's quite wrong. I think we should be flinging things in all directions, you know, outward, outside ourselves. But, yes, there's been a lot of creative stuff and a lot of bubbling ideas and a lot of intelligence in RTS.

mk->> Do you feel that there's a new effort being made by people agreeing to have different opinions on the issue and still work together? How do you organize around that?

Dee->> I have a sense of a constant struggle in RTS. I mean, RTS, as I'm sure you know, is not one unitary organization. It's hardly an organization. People come from many different directions, and sometimes it's quite overt that there are polarities in it. There's the sort of Marxist/social justice polarity of people who, some of them, see ecological issues as a diversion, and so don't want anything to do with that. And then on the other side there are some people who are trying to edge things more into an ecological or environmental sense and other-species sense. There are people coming from all sides, there are animal rights campaigners coming into it as well. And if I felt that the ecological side, the non-humanist side had been completely lost, I would probably leave. Except that one of the most powerful things that keeps me in RTS is that it's partly a bunch of friends. But then, some of my best friends are really very much on the edge now. Some of the people that I've been fondest of and worked with most have distanced themselves, have felt burnt out. So they are on the fringes now, though we still see each other. But friendships are very important, they're important to the way we work as well as how we feel. But, yeah, there are pulls in different directions in RTS. Sometimes it becomes overt, and sometimes it sort of chugs along with people more or less choosing to understand that ecological issues have to be addressed at least partly by focusing on issues of capitalism and political issues. And assuming that people who don't talk about ecological issues at all do have some feelings about them. And sometimes you're reassured. Sometimes someone you've considered a hard-core Marxist says something that reassures you that they have some connection with the non-human world and a concern for what's called the environment. I have difficulty with phraseology here, because I don't much like the word "environment" because it sounds as if it's just something 'round the edge of you, and it sounds as if it's a peripheral issue. It sounds as if it's the nice bits 'round the edge, and I don't like that conception. But on the other hand the word "ecology" can be misleading because it can be applied to almost anything. I mean, anywhere you live your concern about it is ecological. So, it's rather difficult to find a word to express the concern that you have about the world in its non-human aspects.

mp->> Even using the word "natural" versus "human" is kind of a tricky one.

Dee->> Yes, well it is tricky because what is not natural? There is nothing, really, that's not natural in the last analysis. But yes, we can agree to have a sort of temporary definition of these things, can't we?

mk->> It sounds like RTS has been a good focal point for people of quite different political philosophies to engage in constructing actions together, to learn from each other, instead of letting ideological divisions seriously erect barriers between people.

Dee->> Yes, and I suppose we've learned. I mean people of my generation have literally learned and people who are younger it's perhaps just osmosed into them partly. We've learned from the Trot groups. I don't know if you have quite the same in America?

mk->> Yeah, unfortunately.

Dee->> But there are so many of them and they all think all the other ones are absolutely terrible, and they're just constantly battling with each other about dogmatic issues and it's just so boring. So we've learned, we don't want to be like that. But it's not as if we're only agreeing to work together from different points of view. It's partly, we have educated ourselves. There was a period around the time of the Liverpool Dockers issue when a lot of education took place, particularly of people who are coming more from the environmental or ecological side. We had it borne in upon us that it was absolutely crucial that every time you come up with an ecological problem you look at it and what's behind it? Capitalism. And social justice issues are linked to that. I think we do realize much more than we did that the issues are all linked. And especially after we did some reading, quite a lot of us, on globalization, and came to realize how much issues of globalization effect ecological issues. That you just cannot pull them apart. But still, some of our hearts are a bit in different places. I understand that capitalism is something to be fought and social justice issues very important too. But really where my heart is is in trying to keep alive the natural world. Whereas for other people where their heart is would be an issue of social justice. It's partly to do with your childhood, I'm sure. I was brought up in the country and a lot of my heart still is there. But for someone say who's brought up in a working class city environment, obviously their heart is going to be in issues of social justice more.

mp->> One of the things that we were most inspired by, reading about UK activism before we came over, was the sense that there's a lot more networking between very different groups than there is in the U.S. What kinds of networks do you feel have been really fruitful or really effective?

Dee->> Yes, there have been some. The EF! network in this country is a pretty good network. In a way RTS groups are sort of local, city-fied EF! groups. So the EF! network with the Action Update which has been kept going as just a little bulletin, it comes out approximately once a month, or is it once in two months, I can't remember. That keeps us together, and we have the EF! gathering once a year, and now twice a year. Which enables quite a lot of us to meet up with each other. I suppose it's partly because Britain is so much smaller than America, we meet each other more. I've lived with people at Rickety Bridge, for instance, who are now gone back to where they came from in Manchester or Norfolk or wherever it may be, or Brighton. Yeah, the tree camps were a great mixer of people, and people diverge and come together. But I suppose this is a very heavily populated small island which does make networking perhaps easier in some ways than in America.

mp->> And then it makes you realize that if you don't like the people that you're working with on a social basis.

Dee->> Oh, you've got to like them.

mk->> This is an issue, actually. You said this earlier, and we spoke with people about this earlier: Friendship.

Dee->> Oh! It's absolutely crucial. It tides you over those periods when you think "Oh fuck it! RTS can go boil its head!" If you're thinking "Well, my friend's there, gotta go and see her." Friendships are very crucial. There's always going to be people you don't like in the group as well, and that could be obviously a problem. But, I mean, don't you find in groups you've been involved in that friendship has come up as a sustaining thing?

mk->> Very much so. But there's also the ideal of trying to do political work with whoever shows up. Political work is intimate work. You can't always do it with just anyone.

Dee->> You can't.

mk->> Regardless of whether you like them or not, which sounds great, even necessary, but rarely seems to work. This seems a real problem.

Dee->> I think it is. But it's very difficult if that isn't true, isn't it, if you can't work with just anyone?

mk->> Definitely.

Dee->> Because it means that you become an exclusive group. Yes. Some groups, for instance the group that was trying to do the logistics of June the 18th, just did not want certain people in it. Because that would've held things up, that would've made things impossible. You can't actually work with everybody, although you have to make an effort to when it seems possible and the right thing to do. You can't just chuck out everybody you don't like on their ear, can you?

mk->> Right. It's a real paradox, in terms of the idea of organizing activism, organizing anything, actually.

Dee->> No, you can't work like that.

mk->> Because if you don't care about the people that you're working with, you're never going to be able to work collectively with them. Working collectively is inherently caring about how the other person is doing and wanting to share the load with them, wanting to make sure that they are able to carry on. And if they can't that you're going to be there for them to lean on and vice versa. That's always been the appeal of collectivity to me.

Dee->> Mind you, it doesn't happen immediately, does it? I mean, you go in as a stranger, you start as strangers. But, there's nothing for cementing a friendship like going through extremes and hell and heaven together, is there? God, I remember after the siege of Rickety Bridge, a bunch of us who'd lived a lot of the time at Rickety Bridge and known each other before then from London, just came back together after the trees had all come down, came back to my place and we slept out for two days. My flat was entirely full of people like caterpillars on the floor with their sleeping bags. There were about six or eight of us there and we just spent two days together kind of lying on the floor and occasionally going out and getting some food and cooking it, and sort of tickling each other's feet. It was a wonderful bonding experience [Laughs]. You've got to have that, the joy of friendship. And recently in the very stressful run-up to June the 18th it was my friend who was most insistent on it. And she's absolutely right, she said, "We've got to have dinners." So, we had a lot of dinners together, we'd go and have dinner at somebody's house.

mp->> That's a great idea.

Dee->> You've got to do it. It is necessary. We're not paragons. We're human animals. We just can't deny that, really.

 

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